Profile End of life: Doctor Philip Nitschke, the choice disarms
The Australian, head of the global pro-euthanasia group Exit International, is the first doctor to legally help someone die. He has just completed his latest creation, a futuristic capsule that allows it to be done without medical assistance. Develop
Philip Nitschke, 73, is an active and controversial pro-euthanasia and assisted suicide figure at the head of the group Exit International. (Christophe Maout / Liberation) by Julie Brafman published on March 7, 2021 at 9:06 p.m. Perhaps he would have remained an unknown doctor at the hospital in Darwin, a small Australian capital which turns its back on the desert, if history had not interfered with it. Still, today, Philip Nitschke, 73, is a pro-euthanasia and assisted suicide figure, as active as it is controversial, at the head of the Exit International group. The one the press nicknamed "Doctor Death" is a man with white hair, pair of suspenders and round glasses, both creator of machines for the afterlife and thinker of the ultimate. Convinced, according to a formula he loves, that life is a gift that we must be able to return, he pleads so that everyone, whatever their state of health, can make the choice of a "good death" .
Liberation had met, for the first time, the Australian in a cafe in Paris, in October 2019, just after the wave of searches among activists of the French association Ultime Liberté and the seizure of Nembutal, a powerful barbiturate. “There has never been a raid of this magnitude. Even in England, Canada or New Zealand, ” he worried. And to deplore today, while some have just been indicted: “In France, euthanasia is a subject on which there is absolutely no progress, it is very surprising. Undoubtedly the influence of the Church… ”
This inexhaustible and passionate man was a taxi driver, tram driver, ranger in a national park before becoming… the first doctor to legally help someone die. We have to go back to 1995. At the time, the Parliament of the Northern Territory authorized euthanasia in a very supervised manner for patients suffering from an incurable disease. Despite fierce opposition from the Church and part of the medical profession, the law passed in extremis : 13 votes to 12. Philip Nitschke is one of the leaders of the campaign. "I was told, since you wanted this law, now go ahead, use it !"
This is what he will do on September 22, 1996. Bob Dent , a former carpenter, suffering from prostate cancer, eats one last ham sandwich and then sits down in front of a Toshiba big computer, connected to a needle. A series of questions appear. "Do you understand that if you continue to the last screen and press the 'yes' button, you will receive a lethal dose of drugs resulting in death ?" Are you sure you understand that if you go ahead and press 'yes' on the next screen, you will die ? ” With a final click, he receives a lethal dose of Nembutal. It was Philip Nitschke who imagined the machine - called "Deliverance" and now on display at the Science Museum in London - because he did not want to"Just give an injection" and "invade the personal space" of his patient. Everyone must be the sole master of their own destiny, he believes.
Portrait of Philip Nitschke and his prototype lethal gas mask. (Christophe Maout / Liberation)
The approach is part of the legacy of Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan doctor who helped a dozen people die (and ended up in prison), thanks to a device called Thanatron. But in Australia, only three other patients will see the black screen of the Toshiba, crossed out by the word "Exit" because, in 1997, the federal government backpedaled. “People kept coming to me asking how to get Nembutal,” says Philip Nitschke. In particular this Frenchwoman, professor at the University of Perth, who will upset her vision of things. She "decided to die in four years," she says . "Why ?" "Because I'll be 80 and it's a good age."Philip Nitschke does not take her seriously but she returns the following year, with the same request. "You are not sick, go write a book or take a cruise," he annoys . “She replied that she was not there for a sermon but for information, that I was not a judge and that I could not claim the right to choose who should live or die. And she was right ! ”
When he created Exit International in 1997 - "a public not-for-profit company with an online support base of over 30,000 people worldwide" - he made it a global struggle: every sane adult should have the means to end his life when he wants to and whatever his reasons. According to him, the ideal would be to buy a vial of Nembutal, to store it for many years, "just in case", as "a safety net" .
In his “best-seller”, The Peaceful Pill Handbook, written with his wife Fiona Stewart and translated into several languages, he details fifteen other methods, depending on their degree of reliability and serenity, to end it. A sort of Geo Trouvetou de la mort, it even offers tools of its own design such as an “exit bag”, diffusing inert gases. This is not to the taste of his detractors, who even include among them supporters of the right to die with dignity who accuse him of "glamorizing"or encourage suicide, by providing easier access to lethal means. And inevitably, trouble quickly arrived… In 2014, a 45-year-old depressed man, suspected of having killed his wife, ended his life by taking Nembutal. The case caused a scandal in Australia. “I was considered a public danger and my doctor's license was withdrawn,” says Philip Nitschke . Finally, the justice system forbade me to publicize any talk in favor of euthanasia. ”
In a theatrical movement, he burns his license, taking Twitter as a witness, and chooses exile in Switzerland, then in the Netherlands. Today, while the pandemic has put a halt to the pro-euthanasia lectures he gives around the world, he continues the fight online, through his studio in Amsterdam, and has just completed his last - and more resounding - creation which will be used in Switzerland (where assisted suicide is authorized), from next summer, he hopes. The "Sarco" is a coffin with a futuristic design, printed in 3D, which takes you to eternal sleep thanks to the decrease in the level of oxygen. Transportable, it will allow everyone to choose the landscape of their choice before settling down for a last trip. Death is in the meadow and it is "quick, soothing and elegant",praises Philip Nitschke , indicating that there is "already a long waiting list". Beyond that, on the sensationalist side, it is above all a question of extracting this moment from any medical framework. Will it one day settle in its capsule? He doesn't know, he just wants "the choice" .